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including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in
any form.

This is a work of
fiction. All of the characters, names, and events in this book are
products of the author’s imagination or, in the case of referenced
historical persons, are used fictitiously. Any other similarity to
actual persons, names, or events is purely coincidental.

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This story was originally
published in the collection The Other Side Of The Box - 14 Tales
and is presented here as a stand alone story.

Turkeys Eat Turquoise Turnips

Outside of the city was a
valley with several farms. It was called the H Farms Valley because
all of the farmers had a first name which started with the letter
‘H’. Harvey grew chickens, Helen grew apples, Hector grew
cucumbers, Hillary grew lettuce, Henry grew onions, . . . well, you
get the idea.

One of the farmers, Harold
by name, grew turkeys. He was an okay turkey farmer, not the best
and not the worst. Harold did what he had to do to take care of his
turkeys, but what he really liked was color. His was the most
colorful farm in the valley. Everything was painted a different
color, except for the turkeys. They didn’t want to hold still to
be painted. They thought their feathers were pretty enough and they
didn’t want more colorful feathers, especially not like the noisy
peacocks down the road.

One year, Harold decided
to repaint the fence that kept the turkeys on the farm. He painted
each section of the fence a different color: purple, red, pink,
blue, green, orange, . . . well, you get the idea. The turkeys
wondered if something was wrong with Harold. After all, a fence is a
fence and they couldn’t get out, no matter what color it was
painted.

The next year, Harold
decided to repaint the fence again. Similar to last year, he painted
each section a different color, but instead of using single colors,
he decided to blend the colors so that the red went to light red to
dark pink to pink, and the blue went to turquoise to aqua to green, .
. . well, you get the idea.

When he was done, Harold
stood back and thought it was the most colorful fence he had ever
seen. As he was looking across his neighbor’s field at their dull,
boring, single color fence, he saw a rainbow in the distance. He
looked back at his fence and when he saw that his fence looked like a
small piece of a very wide rainbow, he jumped up and down with joy.

One day while Harold was
admiring his fence, he saw that a lot of his turkeys were standing
near one part of the fence. There was nothing growing near the
fence, there was no hole in the fence, the turkeys were just standing
there looking at that part of the fence. Harold went closer and saw
that some of the turkeys would try to bite at the fence, not like
they were angry at it, but as if they liked the color and were trying
to eat it.

Since there were so many
turkeys and several colors next to each other in that section of the
fence, Harold decided to spread out the blended colors to other parts
of the fence to see if the turkeys liked one color more than another.
So he painted a small section only blue, a little ways away he
painted a small section only turquoise, then on another small section
he painted the fence only aqua, . . . well, you get the idea.

The next morning, Harold
went out to the turkey pen and saw that a lot of the turkeys were
standing in front of the section of the fence painted turquoise. He
thought that was really odd, but then he knew that farm turkeys
weren’t very smart. Just to see if the turkeys really did like the
color turquoise, he repainted that section of the fence back to its
previous color and on the other side of the pen, he painted a section
turquoise.

Sure enough, the next
morning, when Harold went out to the turkey pen, the turkeys were
standing in front of the turquoise painted section. While he was
scratching his head and wondering why the turkeys seemed to like the
color turquoise, his neighbor, Huleeoh, called him over to complain
that some of the turkeys had reached under a nearby part of the fence
to eat some of the turnips he had pulled.

Harold was surprised that
the turkeys were interested in turnips because he was feeding them
what all of the proper books said turkeys needed and liked to eat.
Huleeoh didn’t know what was proper for turkeys to eat, but he knew
they sure gobbled up turnips when they could reach them. To show
Harold, he pulled a few small turnips, threw them over the fence, and
the turkeys gobbled those turnips up almost before they could hit the
ground.

Knowing that people liked
plump turkeys for their holiday meals and seeing how the turkeys
really liked to eat turnips, Harold quickly made a deal to buy
Huleeoh’s extra turnips. Huleeoh was happy because not many people
liked turnips and it was hard to sell them. That very afternoon
Huleeoh brought over a cart loaded with turnips he hadn’t sold at
the market and Harold gladly paid for them and joyfully watched his
turkeys gobble up the turnips he set out for them.

Each day, Harold set out
some more turnips and when he did, the turkeys gobbled them up. It
wasn’t long before it was clear that the turnip eating turkeys were
getting fatter than Harold had ever had his turkeys get. And fatter
turkeys meant they would be easier to sell for holiday meals. He
went back to Huleeoh and agreed to purchase all of the turnips
Huleeoh could grow that people didn’t buy. Of course, this made
Huleeoh very happy to sell lots of turnips.

A few days later, Harold
decided that since the turkeys liked turnips and liked the color
turquoise, then maybe they would really like turquoise turnips. He
was smart enough to not feed his turkeys paint, so he tried mixing
blue and green food coloring and found the right mixture to make
turquoise. After soaking the next batch of turnips in the turquoise
food coloring overnight, he set out the turquoise turnips the next
morning and the turkeys really gobbled them up.

One day, a wagon was going
past the turkey farm and one of the wheels hit a hole in the road
which caused a bunch of stones to bounce out of the back of the
wagon. The stones were turquoise from the mine in the hills and some
of them had been cut into a small ball shape.

When those ball shaped
turquoise stones bounced out of the wagon, some of them bounced and
rolled right up to the fence of the turkey pen. A few turkeys saw
the stones bounce to the fence and went over to see what they were.
Sticking their heads through the slats in the fence, they saw what
looked like the small turquoise colored turnips the farmer gave them,
so they gobbled up the turquoise stones.

The first one went ‘thunk’
into their tummies, the second one went ‘clunk’ as it hit the
first one. I don’t know what noise the third one made because
there was barely room in the turkeys’ tummies. Feeling full, the
turkeys that had gobbled up the turquoise stones waddled away,
dragging their suddenly very heavy tummies.

When it was getting close
to the holidays, Harold’s turkeys were fatter than ever and they
still gobbled up all of the turquoise colored turnips he would give
them. Well, except for the few turkeys who had gobbled up the
turquoise stones, they got thinner and thinner because they could
only eat a little before feeling full from the turquoise stones in
their tummies.

The holiday arrived and
Harold was very happy with the many people buying his fat turkeys,
the people were very happy at having such big fat turkeys for their
holiday meals, Huleeoh was very happy to sell so many turnips, and
the other farmers in the valley were happy to sell more of their
crops when the people came to buy Harold’s turkeys. The only ones
who weren’t happy were the silly turkeys who had gobbled up the
turquoise stones and didn’t get sold to be somebody’s holiday
meal.

After the holiday, all of
the farmers were so happy because they sold all of their crops that
they decided to change the name of the valley from H Farms Valley to
Happy Farms Valley.

Wondering why some of his
turkeys were so thin when all of the others had been big and fat,
Harold asked the turkey doctor to visit. After the doctor got the
turquoise stones out of the thin turkeys, Harold had to laugh at the
silly turkeys who couldn’t tell the difference between stones and
turnips.

Harold fixed the fence so
that no more turquoise stones could bounce into the yard for the
turkeys to gobble up, then he fed the thin turkeys real turnips which
were turquoise colored. Soon the thin turkeys started getting bigger
and when the next holiday time arrived, the formerly thin turkeys
made some people very happy to have such big fat turkeys for their
holiday meal.

So, the next time you see
your local turkeys eating turquoise turnips, you might want to make
sure they are eating turquoise colored turnips and not turquoise
colored stones which are shaped like turnips. It just might change
the fate of where you live.

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Note about Turkeys
Eat Turquoise Turnips: Glynn Glenn wrote those four
words in a story as a secret which one character told another. The
words seemed like a story title and, with Glynn Glenn’s permission,
this is the result.

About
the author

The author’s day job
is doing office work from which he escapes to read books and
occasionally write something in the evenings or on the weekends.

If you have any
comments about this story, please leave a review or you can contact
the author at geoff_schultz@yahoo.com.